Treatment of Waste from Business Activity Generated from A University: A Case Study of the Gofuku Campus, University of Toyama

• Published in: Journal of Ecotechnology Research Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 1 - 10
• Main Authors: Tetsuji, CHOHJI, Shintaro, SAYAMA, Shigehiro, KAGAYA
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: International Association of Ecotechnology Research 2025; 特定非営利活動法人 エコテクノロジー研究会
• Subjects: combustible waste; cost; food waste; plastics; recycle; reduce; used paper; waste for business activity
• ISSN: 1881-9982; 1884-0388
• DOI: 10.11190/jer.21.1

The current status of the treatment/disposal of waste for business activity at a university was investigated and discussed using the Gofuku Campus, University of Toyama as an example. It was found that the amount of each category of waste for business activity generated from a room using a teaching staff was 80.5% of used paper waste and 13.7% of plastics waste, which together accounted for 94.2% of the total amount of the waste. As an example of the reduction of weight of food waste, the drying of black tea bags was investigated; it was found that drying for at least two or three days could reduce the weight to about 1/7 of the weight containing a large amount of water after use. Based on these results, the treatment of waste for business activity generated at the Gofuku Campus, University of Toyama was discussed. The amounts of used paper waste and plastics waste were less than the amounts generated from the room using the teaching staff, suggesting that a considerable amounts of these materials were disposed of as combustible waste. The recycling of such used paper waste should be actively promoted because of the reduction of the disposal costs of combustible waste and the provision of income from the selling of used paper waste as a material for production of recycled paper. The cost of recycling plastics waste is higher than the cost to dispose combustible waste; it is necessary to promote the recycling of plastics waste together with the recycling of used paper waste in order to compress the increase in cost, and also to make efforts to reduce the amount of plastics waste generated.